It is my understanding that it is accepted as fact that sleep deprivation, insufficient and improper nutrition and hygiene have a bigger impact on meth users than the substance itself.
This is my belief too, based upon personal experience and anecdotal evidence/medical research. Sleep deprivation is a sure-fire way to make someone go completely insane. Modern science has yet to reveal to us specifically why we need sleep to function, but we certainly know that without it, we become quickly fucked and can even die from it. I've never been anything close to a hardcore stimulant user, but I've definitely gone on several-day binges on Amphetamines. Even missing 2 straight days of sleep has a profound impact on my executive function. I would have trouble talking, putting thoughts together and even my vision was fucked (seeing trails and breathing walls).
Bear in mind that this was only a few days' experience followed by a recovery period. I wasn't dealing with chronic effects like one would experience due to malnutrition and dehydration. Given how totally depleted and messed up I felt following what is a (relatively) short binge on Amphetamines, I can only imagine what a person would feel like after being up for 14 days or more, which seems to happen to people who get involved with Methamphetamine.
I really try to steer away from statements that can't be backed up by any kind of evidence, but I can't keep my mouth shut on this one. I moved around a lot as a kid, but essentially grew up in New England (Lowell, MA), where there were certainly a ton of drugs, but Methamphetamine was never a big thing at all. It was practically unheard of, even in circles of addicts. Now, when I would visit my maternal relatives who lived in southern Illinois, near Missouri, I found that there really were no hard drugs, except for Methamphetamine. This was in farm country. Lots of corn. Lots and lots of corn.
This was my first experience really in seeing Methamphetamine addicts truly "in action" as it were. Remember that I grew up around hard drugs and crack heads, but the look of these Methamphetamine addicts was one of the saddest, miserable things I have ever seen. The pallor, the ghostly white skin, the sunken ashen faces and the eyes; I don't know what it is about the eyes, but they look dead, lifeless. I went to an AA meeting while I was in town and the population was split between Alcoholics, who appeared sort of rundown, but fairly normal and then the Methamphetamine addicts, who you could just spot a mile away. It was so sad.
Even when serious Methamphetamine addicts get clean and no longer use Methamphetamine, it seems like there are some lasting, permanent effects upon their mind and appearance that is just hard to verbalize. I don't know what it is, but Methamphetamine just seems to cause so much damage to users. I don't like to discriminate and I really don't, but based upon my experience and what I've learned over the years, I feel confident in saying that the drug in question is significantly more damaging to the population in general than say, Opioids, whether by primary or secondary effects (malnutrition, sleep etc.). It would seem like Crack Cocaine and Methamphetamine are pretty close in terms of the intensity of the damage they do.
I'm sorry guys, this is all just opinion.
